The Wall Street Journal examines the rapid growth in the number of SAT/ACT test-takers receiving accommodations (such as extra time to complete their tests).

[Excerpts]

Adarsh Vijay Mudgil thought his children had every advantage for college admissions: a top high school in Long Island that offers plenty of AP courses, test-prep tutors and a private adviser to guide them on applications.

Then his daughter told him at least 60 peers received extra time to finish the ACT during their junior year at Jericho High School.

Mudgil said he doubts they all had legitimate reasons for the special accommodation. More likely, they had parents who found a loophole.

“It’s cheating,” said Mudgil, 50, whose daughter is now at the University of Virginia. “It puts our kids at a disadvantage.”

Test time has emerged as a fierce battleground among parents of high-schoolers. Students with diagnosed disabilities or medical issues for years have been given longer to finish college-entrance exams. But the ranks of the extra timers have surged, with a concentration in wealthy areas. And many parents are crying foul.

They’re training their anger on families who are going to extremes for an edge, from spending $10,000 for a diagnosis from a neuropsychologist to finding a gastroenterologist to support requests for unlimited bathroom breaks.

Another tactic, several parents said: Seek out teachers who give their kid extra leeway with test time in class and have them write letters attesting to the student’s anxiety or other reason for special treatment.

Mudgil, a dermatologist, devoted two episodes of his podcast—typically about skin care, fitness and inspirational people—to the topic.

“We’re grooming a generation that is just not going to be capable of performing under pressure, and that’s a scary thought,” he said on an April episode titled “Special Accommodation or Cheating.”

Accommodations vary and depend on the issue. They can include time-and-a-half or double time, testing in a separate room to reduce distractions or having unlimited breaks. Some students with severe anxiety can take the ACT over four days.

ADHD is a common reason. There are also psychiatric factors including anxiety, depression, obsessive compulsive disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Several Manhattan private-school parents said another key to getting extra time—and unlimited bathroom breaks—is enlisting a gastroenterologist to diagnose inflammatory bowel disease or irritable bowel syndrome.

ACT spokesman Juan Elizondo said getting extra time isn’t as simple as paying a neuropsychologist for an evaluation, which can cost between $2,000 and upwards of $10,000 and often isn’t covered by insurance.

He said the ACT also looks for a demonstrated history of special allowances such as a customized curriculum or a 504 plan, a set of accommodations for students with learning disabilities.

The ACT said the share of exam takers who got special accommodations rose to 7% last year from 4.1% in 2013. The College Board, which administers the SAT, said about 6.7% of students taking the exam got extra time last year, compared with 2% a decade ago.

Shannon Alsheimer said students in her daughter Haylie’s Carver, Mass., high school brag that “their mom got them a 504” before the SAT.

“We’re making it too easy on kids to find excuses rather than digging deeper and putting the time and effort in,” said Alsheimer, whose daughter starts at Boston College in the fall. “It’s a crutch.”

According to Laurie Kopp Weingarten, a college-admissions consultant "the accommodations were meant to level the playing field. But what’s happening is they’re tilting the playing field toward those with money and access.”

Scott Hamilton, an Atlanta-based clinical psychologist, described a “surreal” experience with a family after he evaluated their high-school junior and didn’t find evidence that an accommodation on the SAT was needed.

“In what universe do we live in when I said their kid functions really well and they were mad at me?” said Hamilton. “Not finishing the SAT is not a disability.”

 
Lawmakers in the state of Kentucky have taken the unusual step of requiring that a contract with College Board that switched Kentucky's high school juniors from taking the ACT to the SAT be rebid.

[Excerpts]

When the new school year begins in the fall, students won’t know which college entrance exam they’ll take in the spring, according to the Kentucky School Boards Association.

After years of taking the ACT, Kentucky students took the SAT this academic year because the College Board, which owns the SAT, won the state contract to administer the exam. ACT unsuccessfully protested the contract, KSBA said.

The uncertainty, KSBA says, stems from a new state law passed on the last day of the General Assembly.

Senate Bill 197, sponsored by Rep. Jason Petrie, R-Elkton, says the state must rebid the contract for the statutorily required college entrance exam given to all high school juniors in the spring.

Jennifer Stafford, Kentucky Department of Education associate commissioner, acknowledged during a May 5 Local Superintendents Advisory Council that this can cause planning headaches.

“I do want to assure superintendents that we understand the uncertainty that this brings for our schools and districts, that districts want clarity as they plan for the upcoming school year,” Stafford said.

When lawmakers passed SB 197 on April 15, Petrie said lawmakers wanted the state to go back to using the ACT so it could compare scores over time and that the SAT could be considered at a later date, the KSBA report said.

The 4-year contract was expected to save the state up to $350,000 a year, the Herald-Leader previously reported.

Gov. Andy Beshear vetoed Senate Bill 197’s ban on using state funds to pay for the contract, but did not veto the requirement to rebid the contract, KSBA said. State officials expect to have the contract completed by October, according to KSBA.

 
Regarding the Kentucky testing controversy, the non-profit Bluegrass Institute has issued a scathing assessment of the state's switch from the ACT to the SAT, to the point of stating that the switch violated Kentucky law.

[Excerpts]

The Kentucky Department of Education's December 2025 briefing omitted required statistical significance markers, excluded all racial subgroup data, and entirely failed to present legally mandated ACT results showing serious declines that contradict the improving state assessment narrative. The department's switch to the SAT appears to violate state law, severs Kentucky's only continuous 18-year high school trend line, and has no public record of state board approval.

 
The Bluegrass Institute later issued another report focusing on the switch to the SAT.

[Excerpts]

Kentucky’s decision to replace the ACT with the SAT as its statewide 11th-grade college admissions exam represents a significant and poorly managed change to the state’s assessment system—one that weakens accountability, raises questions about statutory compliance, and demands immediate legislative and state school board attention.

For nearly two decades, Kentucky’s annual administration of the ACT college entrance test to all 11th grade students has produced the longest continuous and comparable measure of student performance in the state. That trend line shows a sustained decline in achievement since 2016-17, including across English, mathematics, reading, and science.

Despite the importance of this information, ACT results were omitted from key public communications and largely excluded from state board discussions in late 2025. At the same time, the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) moved forward—without required stakeholder involvement—to replace the ACT with the SAT beginning in 2026, effectively ending an 18-year trend line.

This is not a routine substitution. The ACT and SAT are fundamentally different tests, and widely accepted concordance methods do not support constructing a valid long-term trend across them. As a result, Kentucky is losing its most reliable tool for tracking changes in student performance over time—particularly at a moment when policymakers need clear evidence about recovery from the impacts of COVID.

The process used to make this decision also raises serious governance concerns. Kentucky law requires the Kentucky Board of Education to oversee the assessment system and mandates consultation with multiple advisory bodies. Available evidence suggests that these requirements were not fulfilled prior to the decision to switch tests.

In addition, the SAT does not directly assess all subject areas required by statute— specifically English and science—as distinct tested domains. This raises unresolved questions about whether the new assessment complies with Kentucky law.

The consequences of this decision extend beyond governance. The abrupt transition gives districts and students limited time to adjust to a different test format, potentially disadvantaging students who had been preparing for the ACT, particularly in less-resourced districts.

 
There has been significant discussion in recent years of how high school grade inflation indicates the use of standardized tests to identify which students will succeed in college. However, grade inflation has been even more pronounced in colleges. The New York Times reports that Harvard University has addressed the rampant grade inflation among its undergraduates by mandating a cap of 20% 'A' grades per class.

[Excerpts]

Faculty members at Harvard University voted in recent days to cap the number of top grades they are permitted to award to undergraduate students, in an attempt to reduce grade inflation at one of America’s most prestigious colleges.

The new policy will limit A’s to 20 percent of the letter grades awarded in a course, with an allowance for as many as four additional A’s. Faculty voted on the proposal this month, and the results were announced Wednesday.

In a course with 100 students, for example, a professor would be permitted to award up to 24 A’s. There is no limit on grades of A-minus or lower, and the cap applies only to undergraduates.

The vote was 458 in favor, 201 against.

“This is a consequential vote,” Amanda Claybaugh, the dean of undergraduate education, said in a statement. “It will, I believe, strengthen the academic culture of Harvard; it will also, I hope, encourage other institutions to confront similar questions with the same level of rigor and courage.”

Grades at Harvard have been creeping upward for decades. In the 2024-25 school year, about two-thirds of undergraduate letter grades were A’s, a distinction that is supposed to be reserved for extraordinary work, according to the student handbook.

A little over a decade earlier, in 2012-13, just 35 percent of Harvard letter grades were A’s.

Grade inflation is a national problem that experts say reduces the value of grades. If most students get an A, grades become less valuable to employers, graduate school admissions officers and the students themselves as measures of their subject mastery.

It becomes effective in the 2027 academic year. The policy will be reviewed after three years, though it would take a new round of faculty legislation to change it.

Steven Pinker, a Harvard psychology professor who has been outspoken about the problem of grade inflation, cheered the results.

“Grade inflation forced a race to the bottom in which any professors who held the line with challenging material and standards would see their enrollments plummet,” Dr. Pinker said in an email. “It turned universities into national laughingstocks.”

Even more could be done, he suggested, such as capping the number of A-minus grades, “but this is a good start.”

Ray Fair, a Yale University economics professor who has studied grade inflation, said the Harvard cap on A’s appeared to be a step in the right direction that could have broad-reaching effects beyond Harvard’s campus.

“Harvard could be the key in all of this,” he said. “If they move it could bring other schools around.”

But the cap is unpopular with students, according to Hyunsoo Lee, a Harvard sophomore and academic officer for Harvard student government. In a survey this year, about 94 percent of roughly 800 student respondents opposed or leaned against the cap.

Many cited concerns about increased competition with classmates, which they fear will decrease collaboration, Mr. Lee said. “It incentivizes people to be selfish. We’re surrounded by the best students in the world, and we learn from each other.”

 
The Grand Island Independent looks at the first year of digital SAT testing:

[Excerpts]

Taking the SAT looks different now than it did five years ago.

The test went fully digital in 2024, a shift College Board billed as shorter, more accessible, and better suited to how today's students actually learn. Participation responded in a big way. Scores went the other direction. And the schools that swore off testing during the pandemic? Some are quietly bringing it back.

A year of data is now in. The story it tells isn't the one anyone scripted.

The Numbers Don't Match the Marketing

Start with participation, because that part of the digital rollout worked. The class of 2025 became the first majority-digital cohort, with 97% taking the test on a screen. More than 2 million students sat for the SAT, the highest figure since 2020 and a jump from 1.97 million the year prior.

That's a reasonable victory lap for a redesigned test. Shorter format, adaptive sections, students bringing their own devices. On paper, accessibility improved.

But the average score kept sliding. Mean scores dropped from 1051 for the class of 2020 to 1028 in 2023, then to 1024 in 2024. The digital era arrived, and the downward trend didn't pause to acknowledge it.

So the data raises an obvious question: if the test is supposedly more student-friendly, why aren't scores following participation upward?

What the Drop Is Actually Telling Us

A surge in participation almost always pulls average scores down. When more students test, the pool widens to include kids who might have skipped it in a test-optional world.

But that explanation only goes so far. The decline began before the digital switch, which suggests something deeper than format is in play. Pandemic-era learning gaps, shifts in how students prepare, and the long tail of test-optional policies all factor in. The digital SAT didn't cause the slide. It just didn't reverse it either. Even at launch, education observers questioned whether a shorter, sleeker test would meaningfully change outcomes or simply repackage them.

And that matters, because the test was supposed to be a fresh start. Adaptive questions, a built-in calculator, no more bubbling answers with a pencil that's been chewed half to death. The redesign promised to meet students where they are. The numbers suggest "where they are" is a more complicated place than a format change can fix.

The Reinstatement Wave No One Saw Coming

Then there's the plot twist colleges handed everyone.

For a stretch, test-optional looked like the future. Then a wave of reversals hit. Dartmouth, Yale, Brown, MIT, Caltech, Stanford, Georgetown, UT Austin, and the public university systems in Florida and Georgia all moved back to requiring scores. According to FairTest, more than 80% of four-year colleges remain test-optional, but the schools breaking ranks are the ones with the loudest megaphones.

Their reasoning, broadly, is that scores helped them identify high-achieving students from under-resourced schools, the exact students test-optional policies were meant to protect. Whether that holds up across more institutions is a separate debate. The signal it sends to families is not.

For students staring down junior year, the message is muddled. Some schools want scores. Others don't. A few want them now after years of saying they didn't. Prep stopped being optional the moment a dream school changed its mind.

Why Prep Behavior Is Quietly Shifting

The digital format rewards a different kind of preparation than paper ever did.

Adaptive sections mean the second module's difficulty depends on how a student handles the first. Pacing matters more. Familiarity with the digital interface matters more. Strategies that worked for the paper SAT, like skipping around freely or marking up the booklet, don't translate cleanly. The test isn't harder, exactly. It's just different in ways that punish students who prep like it's still 2019.

Smart prep now means practicing on screen, learning the platform's tools, and building stamina for a test that's shorter but more concentrated. Students who treat the digital SAT like the paper version with a new coat of paint tend to find that out the hard way on test day.

 
The Classic Learning Test continues to receive more approvals and is being taken by more students, prompting Town & Country to ask "Have the Culture Wars Come for Standardized Tests?"

[Excerpts]

Starting this upcoming college admissions cycle, students applying to service academies such as West Point and the U.S. Naval Academy will be able to take a standardized test other than the SAT or ACT to be considered for admission.

Enter the CLT, or Classic Learning Test, a fill-the-bubble test whose English section is filled with passages from Virgil, John Stuart Mill, and other members of the Western canon meant to push a student a little harder in their analytical thinking—and knowledge of Classical texts, as well as Scripture—than the SAT and ACT do. Something else unique to the CLT: it can be taken at home, without a proctor, any time within a 12-hour window.

According to Jeremy Tate, the former schoolteacher and test prep company owner who launched the CLT in 2015, the test is “kind of the Rudy or Seabiscuit” going up against the double-headed Goliath of the SAT-ACT. Those tests, Tate said, have been in “a race to the bottom” for the last few decades. “The dumber test gets the market advantage,” he said, meaning that in the standardized testing world’s version of Coke versus Pepsi, consumers, i.e. students, choose to take either the SAT or ACT based on the one they think they’ll do better on. So the test that’s perceived to be easier wins.

“Anyone can see that,” Tate said, “I’ve got a copy of the 1980 SAT in our office and any eight-year-old could look at it and say, ‘Oh, wow, this is way harder than the current SAT where the longest reading passage is 120 words. Some of the reading passages are just 25 words, they’re just a short sentence.

“If you’re just going to lay eyeballs on the two tests, it’s like, here’s 600 words of Shakespeare or John Locke (on the CLT) versus a passage about Taylor Swift (on the SAT). It’s dramatically different.”

However the ancient Greeks may feel about it, since 2023, when the CLT was accepted in Florida as an alternative to the ACT and SAT for students applying to state schools and scholarships, it vaulted from being a quirky test mostly taken by religious homeschoolers (Christian colleges were early adopters) into one that, while it is still dwarfed by the ACT and SAT in numbers, is seeing hockey-stick growth. In 2024, 190,194 students took the CLT, compared to 291 in 2016.

In response to a question about the CLT’s status as an alternative to the SAT, the company wrote in an email: “College entrance exams carry real consequences for students, so any test used for admissions, placement, or scholarships should meet a high bar: clear, transparent evidence that it predicts college readiness and success. The SAT meets that bar. It’s backed by decades of independent, peer-reviewed research showing its ability to predict first-year college performance, and it’s trusted by higher education because it consistently meets rigorous standards for validity, reliability, security, and fairness.

“States and colleges should expect that same level of evidence before using any alternative. To date, the CLT has not demonstrated it. Independent reviews and experts from the Iowa Board of Regents, the University of Nebraska’s Buros Center for Testing, and Arizona State University have raised consistent concerns about the CLT’s lack of evidence for predicting college success, as well as issues with score consistency, fairness, and its use in high-stakes decisions.”

Tate’s response?

“The SAT keeps releasing studies, white papers, psychometric jargon, and committees of experts explaining why it’s rigorous. Meanwhile, anybody with two functioning eyes can compare the actual tests and see the obvious: one asks students to wrestle with difficult texts, richer vocabulary, logic, philosophy, history, math without a device, and sustained reading comprehension, and the other increasingly resembles a gamified adaptive app designed to keep average students from feeling discouraged.

“If the modern SAT is truly the gold standard of academic rigor, then why does the CLT keep getting accused of being ‘too hard,’ ‘too classical,’ and ‘too content rich’ by the very people defending the SAT? You don’t need a 200-page report to recognize the difference between a filet mignon and a Lunchable.”

Chris Teare, an independent college counselor based in Connecticut and Florida, said of the CLT: “As I learn more about it, the CLT strikes me as being—to borrow from Tolstoy—‘unhappy in its own way.’ All standardized tests have flaws of one type or another and are criticized accordingly. My Florida students—who are required to submit one standardized test or another—have not brought it up. I have not yet recommended the CLT because not one of my students is deep enough into studying the Classics for me to have suggested it."

Jamie Beaton, founder of Crimson Education, was more blunt: "The Classic Learning Test is not currently a viable alternative to the SAT/ACT and of our 373 Ivy League offers this year, zero of them took this test. We would not recommend competitive applicants to take it at this stage because it is not yet viewed as a true peer to the more standard testing measures. It is better to achieve an excellent score in standardized tests that have broader recognition.”

 
The Classic Learning test may be poised to be accepted as a college entrance exam in Iowa as soon as June 2026.

[Excerpts]

Iowa’s Board of Regents is considering a policy change next month to allow a third standardized test at the state’s public universities, a decision that would reverse the board’s rejection of the Classic Learning Test just two years ago.

At its meeting late last month, the board took a step to change language in its admission requirements that could open the door for the new standardized test.

“Regent Admission Requirements, currently the RAI states ACT or SAT, we are changing that language to say standardized test,” said Mark Braun of the Iowa Board of Regents.

One of the fastest-growing standardized tests in the U.S. is the Classic Learning Test, or CLT. CLT Policy Director Michael Torres said it’s the first competition to the SAT or ACT since the CLT was created in 2015, and a lot of that growth has happened in the last three years.

“We are now administering 200,000 CLTs a year up from just about 20,000 just a few years ago. So it has grown by 10X just in the last three years,” Torres said.

Much of that growth has taken place in Republican-led states, including Florida, Arkansas, Texas and Indiana. Torres said he hopes Iowa will soon join them. The policy director said the CLT is not a red or blue issue.

“You aren't going to find any partisan content in the CLT because Socrates didn't know what a Republican or Democrat was so we kind of transcend that partisan issue whereas the other two tests (the ACT and SAT) had Bernie Sanders on the exam,” Torres said.

The board did not explicitly say it is adding the CLT to its standardized tests, but it is changing the language at its next meeting.

“The committee will receive the policy manual review revisions as a second and final reading at the June meeting,” Braun said.